


Time by Heartbeats

by StarlightSoul (SaraSauce)



Category: Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon+, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Starts At Level Zero, Dubious Science, Emotional Hurt, Eventual Relationships, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, It's not like MC brings someone magically back from the dead tho, Learning on the job, Lots of Cursing, MC made her own problems, Magic and Science, Mc Adopted everyone under the age of 18 whoops, Not Canon Compliant, Original Character-centric, Saving the World, Time Travel, Time travel is complicated, adopted family, no beta reader we die like men, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-06-29 20:53:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19838320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaraSauce/pseuds/StarlightSoul
Summary: Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.T. S. EliotMora was being stupid and prideful when she booted up her machine - but she wasn’t about to let some bro-dude air force pilot swoop in and steal her thunder. Now she had to face the consequences of her recklessness as she’s swept from time to time like a leaf in a storm. She thought time travel was her ticket to the Nobel, but now it's a curse, any semblance of a normal life in the time it took for her machine to explode. Stability was her comfort zone - and now there was nothing but running and fighting. How was a lab geek supposed to learn how to slay monsters and try to get home at the same time?





	1. Breaking Lab Safety Rules and The Reasons You Don't

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe I'm writing for Kingdom Hearts in this year of the 2k19. OC is the main character, and there's a lot of jumping around. Please let me know if anything gets too confusing!  
> First long while will be Dream Drop Distance and earlier, as I have not played KH3 yet cause I'm Poor.  
> I've been working on this for a while and I'm so excited to get this out to you! Updates aren't scheduled but should be up fairly often as I have a lot already drafted.  
> Enjoy, R&R
> 
> Tumblr: starlightsoulwriting.tumblr.com  
> FF: https://www.fanfiction.net/u/3130716/

_If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?_  
_Albert Einstein_

Mora Wells was being stupid.

World-Shatteringly Stupid.

She was being prideful and selfish and breaking all sorts of lab safety protocols, and if she lived, she would be in all sorts of trouble with the Dean and maybe even arrested by the FBI.

Mora was being stupid with a capital “S” and she knew it.

But she did have her _reasons_ for being stupid.

She would rather do this test herself than some random intern, younger than even herself (the cats and rabbits and chimpanzees had been fine, but still.)

There was also the small, itty-bitty factor that her mother’s research is the sole reason any of this could happen. This was a Family Matter and no Air-Force pilot shmuck was going to come in last minute and steal their thunder.

Her mother deserved better. The first human time traveler would be a Wells, not someone who hadn’t even worked on the project. Mora remembered being _just six_ and sitting on her mother’s lap in her childhood home, her mother’s voice gently explaining what she was working on, how time could be worked with if they did things _just so_. Later, when she was taking her first college engineering courses at the age of fourteen, she was already dead set on working on her mother’s project with her.

She _had_ to be the one to do this. There was no-one else. Not anymore.

Her Mum hadn’t spent thirty years in an irradiated lab to be passed over.

Mora booted up the thrumming machine.

The pre-checks were in the green, the power-up sequence was stable, and the energy-siphon build-up drew power at the correct rate.

Mora steeled herself, standing up to face the open door of the Temporal Teleporter; energy was building and the machines trill got louder. 

She stepped inside, closed her eyes, and waited for the countdown to tick to zero.

There was a flash, Moraw was floating for a moment, frozen in a single drop of eternity.

And then the machine exploded.

She was pulled in every direction at once. She saw galaxies behind her eyes and breathed in ancient nebulae and for a single heartbeat she felt the end of existence. Her body was shredding and reforming and stretching to the far reaches of the universe all at once and it was nothing but pain, pain, pain, all the way down until she was abruptly and violently shoved back into her own mess of a body, and she was altogether too small and too solid for her to handle.

She groaned, rolling onto her stomach and heaving onto the warm black sand beneath her, paying no mind to where (or when) she was. She didn’t care her hair was in her face and getting vomit on it, or that her whole body was shaking like a leaf and despite the sand being warm, the wind battering her battered body was like ice. She could barely feel it - could barely feel anything, really. _She was so fucked._

After what felt like both a day and a nanosecond, but was in reality somewhere in between, she crawled behind a boulder to take shelter from the wind, curled up into a ball, and let the veil of darkness fall over her eyes.

* * *

At the same time, all the Nobodies on The World That Never Was felt with resounding, unwavering certainty that Someone had trespassed on their world.

Axel closed eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. What was she doing not wearing her cloak before jumping? The whole planet knew where she was right now! Now _he_ would have to go and make sure the heartless didn’t eat her.

She really was the dumbest smart person he knew.

The last thing Axel expected to find was Mora passed out, shaking, in a flimsy, shredded lab coat and not responding to him - not even to pain. His teasing words caught in his throat, forgotten. Something had gone wrong. He just hoped Zexion would know what to do. He had a sneaking suspicion it wouldn’t be a simple cure spell and good as new - if it had been that easy, she would have done it herself.

He would just have to make sure he found Zexion before Vexen saw them. He would have a field day and Axel would never hear the end of it.

And if it bothered him at all that someone he’s known for more than ten years was catatonic - well, nobody was there to see him feel it.

* * *

Mora spent the next three days, four hours, and fifty-eight minutes fading in and out of consciousness. She was occasionally able to drink the broth held out in front of her, but unable to bother with where she was or who was tending to her. When she came-to it was slow and she felt like she’d been hit by a freight train and then fed to wolves.

And then set on fire.

As she came back to the awareness, she started to make out voices around her, and an intense white light that made her wince and force her eyes shut again. Her thoughts were hazy and fragmented, none being able to focus on the fact that the bed she was on wasn’t hers. Maybe she should stay put for a few more minutes. Just the thought of opening her eyes or, god forbid, _moving_ made her want to cry.

She heard a voice break through the persistent ring in her ears. It was hushed and soft, if whiny, and it cracked a few times as the speaker talked. “It’s just that she’s never been this sick. It’s messed up, and the boss is being super scary about her not working”

There was a sigh. “You’re not worried, Demyx.” This person was more monotoned and blasé, like he was having the most boring conversation in the world. “And at least I stepped up before Vexen did. She would be horrible about it for weeks, not to mention he would likely make her condition worse.” He sounded like he was about to stop talking, but suddenly changed his mind, “Her vitals are fine, her heart is fine, and we’re making sure she’s hydrated. She was probably just sick when she jumped, and her body is recovering. Ripping a hole in space-time takes its toll - especially for someone unenhanced. She wasn’t wearing any protect charms either, and that couldn’t have helped.”

There was audible whining from the first one. “I guess…”

“She’s awake.” A third voice popped in, a bit more raspy than the others, and sounding a few years older.

Mora blushed and opened her eyes, wincing at the light, pushing herself into a sitting position, muscles crying out at her. She opened her mouth to speak, croaking. Her face burned as she cleared her throat and tried again, voice coming out like she had been drowned. “Sorry for eavesdropping.” Three young men were in the room with her, one with dark blue hair, one with a dirty blond mullet, and one with the most insane red hair she had ever seen.

The one with blue hair spoke first, raising one eyebrow. “Well, we are in your room. Hardly a place we would have a conversation that needs confidence.” He was the second voice, the blasé one. Mora shrugged back at that, unsure how to respond. She wrapped her arms around herself in a hug and looked anywhere but the people in front of her.

She… was kind of at a loss. She was prepared for a lot of possibilities, but she had assumed that if something went wrong she would just… die in a horrible explosion. Or turn inside out, or be stuck in the middle ages.

Maybe she _had_ been sent to the past..? Or maybe it’s the future? She couldn’t really tell from the clinically white room. There was no guarantee she was even on Earth anymore. A couch wracked through her and rattled her frame, so her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them so she wouldn’t be forced to lie down again.

The redhead just looked miffed, frowning at her. “You gonna tell me why I had to go find you passed out on the beach all alone? You could’ve been killed, dunderhead. And _you_ get on _us_ about safety.”

“I’m... sorry?” Why was this dude acting like he knew her?

“Yeah, you better, be, Peaches, cause Xemnas was this close to turning me into a Dusk.” He held up his fingers close together, indicating his close call.

Mora blinked. Peaches? Xemnas? _A_ dusk? How would someone get eaten by that? Her face scrunched up comically, eyes narrowing. “Do I know you?”

That didn’t seem to be a response he was expecting, his face twisting oddly and looking a bit lost. He coughed into his hand and exchanged a look with the other two boys. The blond looked like he was about to cry - but he had been like that when she had woken up. The one with blue hair sat down in a chair across from her. He leveled her with a look she couldn’t decipher.

“Where were you before you were on the beach?” 

She furrowed her eyebrows, wondering where this was going, but answered nonetheless. “I was in my lab. I was running a test. Teleportation.” She would leave out the time travel bit - it wasn’t entirely a lie - she was working with teleportation through time _and_ space, but teleportation through just space worked similarly.

“And what do you remember about that test?”

“Everything was going well, startup sequences going just the way they should, so I stepped in and… ” Realization hit her with such force she couldn’t even cry out - her hands flew to her mouth and she went ramrod straight in the bed. She had exploded! Her hands started to shake as she checked herself over, noticing the barely-there-anymore burn barks littering her exposed skin. Breath came to fast but she felt like she wasn’t getting any air. Black sand was embedded underneath her nails and fell loose from her dark hair as she pulled at it desperately.

She! Had! Exploded!

“Am I dead?” She started, eyes wide and pupils nothing but pinpricks. “Are you ghosts? Am I a ghost?” Hear heart hammered against her ribcage, telling her how stupid her words were but she still couldn’t bring herself to calm down.

The redhead made a sound across from her, looking somehow both heavily amused and annoyed at the same time. “No, _you’re_ not dead. Your heart wouldn’t be about to beat out of your chest if you were, genius.”

The blue-haired one frowned at his friend and rolled his eyes. “Ignore him.” He stood up and took her hand in his, shaking it firmly. “Congratulations, Mora. Your experiment worked. You are no longer in the space-time you were when you stepped into the machine. You are most decidedly not dead - simply misplaced.”

She blinked, finding it hard to absorb that information. She probably looked like a fish with the way she was trying to find words - and it wasn’t made easier by _the redhead laughing at her in the corner_. She frowned and threw her pillow at him, hitting him in the chest. “Hey chuckle-fuck, shut up! I’m having a crisis!” He still chuckled, but he reigned himself in.

She paused for a moment, realization hitting her. She turned to the blue one, light green eyes hard. “You know my name. Explain.”

He shrugged, waving his hand vaguely. “The time travel worked, Mora, but it didn’t work perfectly. We’ve all met you before, several times. From what we’ve gathered and what you’ve told us, time is unstable around you, sending you from place to place. The more spiritual of us suspect it’s to punish you for your arrogance.” He moved to the window and stared up and the moonless night sky. In her periphery she saw the redhead grab the blond and drag him out of the room, apparently deciding to give her some privacy. “I, however, think there's a certain instability caused by your presence that builds up into a larger crack, that you then fall through. You’ve yet to show up twice at the same time.”

Mora felt like she was gonna puke. Instead she just closed her eyes and pressed her hands against her face dejectedly. “Do you know if I can fix it?” 

He shakes his head and shrugs again. “You could go check your notes.” He gestures to the desk across the room. “But I don’t know if you’ve managed to. If you eventually do, it’s either later in _our_ future, or it doesn’t happen at the castle.” He stands up and crosses his arms. “I am Zexion, I’m also a researcher. The crying blond was Demyx, and the rude one was Axel.” He stands there for a moment, then leaves awkwardly with that as his goodbye. At least he’s probably handling this better than she was.

So much for good manners.

Mora sighed and laid down again, not even bothering with grabbing her pillow from the ground. She didn’t get up to read her notes, she didn’t go to the bathroom, and she did not get up for food. Hot tears built up behind her eyes, and when they inevitably spilled over she didn't fight it, small hiccups leaving her lips instead of the screams she felt like letting go. No one would hear her cry. Not if she could help it.

Even if she felt the most lost she’s felt since her Mom died.


	2. Tantrums and Time Travel Texts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mora flips her shit.

> Hiraeth
> 
> (orig.) Welsh
> 
> (n.) a homesickness for a home to which you may not return, a home which maybe never was; the notalgia, the grief, the yearning for the lost places of our past.

Mora sat there in her room for hours, staring at the ceiling. What was the point of doing anything? She was in a strange place with strange people, and had no path forward. The stark white of the room was burning her retinas and making her eyes water, but there wasn’t a whole lot she could do about it - she had looked for a light switch, but there wasn’t one. It was just… bright for no discernable reason, despite the pitch night outside.

She just wished she could talk to someone. Her dad, or brother, or even one of the interns. Anyone familiar.

She rifled through the notes on her desk, a deep unease building in her stomach as she read them. Every single one was in her handwriting and used the same words she would have. None of them, however, were helpful. They were all technical notes on weird animals and unfamiliar machines. And what was all this talk about Hearts? Was she suddenly a biologist in the future? She scoffed at the thought. Yeah, cause now’s the _perfect_ time for a career change. Who needs all that schooling when you can talk about organs! Euch.

Her breath caught when she caught a page of frantic writing in a language she did not understand - it was messy and didn’t follow any sort of lines, the paragraphs scattering the page like fallen index cards.

But it was still her handwriting.

She suddenly felt like puking again, but there was nothing for her to throw up but water.

She sat down on the stiff desk chair and ran her hands through her hair. _Deep breath. You’re okay. You’re fine._ She stuffed the page into the deepest recess of the desk and closed the drawer on it harder than necessary.

_Honestly_ , a thought struck her, _if only future me had left a goddamn note._

_...but what if she did._

Mora stood up and began searching the room again - this time looking for hidden compartments. If it was for her eyes only, it probably wouldn’t be out in the open. She pulled on the drawers on the desk, but they were all sealed firmly shut - which was odd, considering there were no locks. She frowned whacking them petulantly. Maybe underneath? Or in her nightstand?

Looking underneath the desk yielded nothing but a banged head. When she sourly yanked the drawer on her nightstand open, all it had was a disappointment - stationery and charms. 

_Damnit._

She lifted up her mattress, looking through every layer of sheets and under the baseboards - still nothing. She threw it down with a huff, reveling in the shrieks of rusty springs as it hit the bed frame. _This is stupid! What was she even doing here?_

_That’s right, she was an arrogant dumbass!_

And she is _losing it._

She ran her hands through her dark hair roughly, tugging on the ends and letting out a clenched-teeth whine. _Damnit! Fuck!_ She should be _home_! She was so stupid! Why did she have to be such an egotistical prick?! She would be at the lab right now, probably repairing the machine instead of throwing a tantrum in an empty white box!

_Damnit!_

Hot tears bubbled from her eyes, and she covered her face with her hands. _Stupid, stupid, stupid!_ She shouldn’t be here! She punted the frame of the bed, almost growling now, but recoiled with a sharp hiss as throbbing pain jolted through her bare foot, pissing her off beyond measure.

In that moment, something snapped.

She turned to the nightstand and jerked the drawer all the way out of the nightstand and hurled it at the wall, and it gave a satisfying crash and splintered to pieces at the seams. Jewelry and paper littered the floor where it fell.

Next went her pillow, and then three separate notebooks, a paperweight, and some sailor-moon looking wand junk. Huffing, and out of items to throw, she resorted to kicking her desk. And it _hurt like hell,_ but it felt good and the tightness in her chest just felt so much worse. It was burning a clawing and it felt like sticky goo was eating her from the inside _god damnit_

And she cried, and she cried, and she fell to the floor and cried some more.

Eventually, the screams turned into sobs, and the sobs turned into hiccups, and slowly yet suddenly she was very, very tired. She plucked a napkin from the mess and wiped her face off, wincing at the rough texture on her puffy, inflamed skin. But she was gross and snotty, so she did it anyway.

Then she hit her head on the nightstand on her way up. She turned to flip it off, but something caught her eye instead.

A lone piece of parchment, neatly folded and covered in dust, hidden in the space where the drawer used to be. She took it with trembling hands and gingerly broke the wax seal. 

The note was in her own handwriting, in rich black ink. The page was stained with… something. Not blood, and not ink - just a dark-purple _something_. An unsettled feeling crawled into her throat and made its home there.

She steeled herself, and read.

_“Mora,_

_I know things are confusing and awful right now, but what you need to do right now is listen. There are things you need to know. One wrong step and you could easily end up dead or worse._

_You need to familiarize yourself with the sequence of history, who lives when, and what threats may appear each jump. Knowing your enemy and how to fight - or run from - them is the best thing you can do to keep yourself alive. You need to learn how to fight. This place you’ve landed in is dangerous as all hell and if you don't learn to fight you’ll be eaten by monsters. And no, I’m not kidding._

_If you make a journal, secrecy is the number one concern you have. You can’t write in just anything - if the wrong person reads it, it could end in disaster. Journaling in normal books would be a good way to tell everyone in exact detail everything that happens ever. Don’t do that._

_Don't tell anyone about their futures, even if you desperately want to. Hello, paradox anyone? We already fucked this up enough without potentially unraveling the fabric of space-time, thank you._

_And don’t take a single thing for granted. Don’t assume you will live because someone mentioned something you haven’t done yet. Don’t assume someone else will live because you’ve met them later in the timeline. The nature of time is chaos - if you don’t fight for your life and fear death then you are going to be killed because you got cocky and assumed everything is set in stone because ~I’ve been to the future, I know I’ll live so I don’t need to worry~ Because you could die, and then you won’t be here to write this letter, and, look, we ripped another hole in space-time. Congrats._

_Just... be careful, okay?_

_May your Heart be your guiding Key_

_-MW”_

She stiffly folded the parchment and tried to sort through her thoughts, but honestly, Mora just sat there on the floor, stunned, mind empty but for the steady stream of “ _what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what th-”_ that ran through her mind.

She didn’t quite know what to do with herself after that.

Logically, she knew that all of this should be impossible and that she might be dead or in a coma. 

Realistically, she knew those thoughts didn’t help her stay alive on the off chance that she wasn’t comatose. And what was up with the “May your heart be your guiding key” shit? She’d never said that before in her life. Feckin weird.

She took a moment to compose herself, then got to work, pushing herself to her feet with a grunt and searched the room for a lighter. If spy movies told her anything, it was that you burned letters with sensitive information (even if they made no sense). She huffed and crossed her arms when she found nothing and settled for tearing up the letter itty little pieces instead. Hopefully, no one would care about the newly made confetti.

Now to clean up. She gathered the pens and paper around the room and set them back on her desk now that they had no drawer to rest in, and gathered the splintered wood into the bin. It oddly soothing, cleaning the aftermath of her rampage. Like going outside after a thunderstorm. Maybe one day she could audition for Godzilla.

She remade the bed, straightened the desk, and put the oddly soft clothes back where they should be. 

She should take a shower.

And so she did, finding the small full bathroom next to her room already had towels. She took some deep breaths as she wrung the shampoo through her short hair. _She would be fine. She could do this. She didn’t have her mothers notes, but she had her wits._ She just hoped that it would be enough for her to get home. 

As she stepped into the cold air and shivered, her mind sped through different theories of what went wrong with the machine. Obviously, the explosion had caused the targeting system to fail and send her somewhere and somewhen decidedly _not_ eight A.M. the next morning, like it should have. The big question was _what had caused the explosion?_

She sat down at her desk, minding the bruises forming on her right foot, feeling lighter than she had since she woke up. She brushed all the papers away, stacked them neatly in the corner, and grabbed a blank sheet of paper before filling it in solid with a yellow highlighter. She lost herself, letting her hands focus on a piece she’d made thousands of times since she was young, while her mind wandered. The folds came together almost by themselves as she worked through the events of the test. Maybe there was tachyon radiation from the lab next door? No, that had never caused interference in any of the trials, it wouldn’t make sense for that to make a difference while the lab was running, let alone during off-hours. A mistake in her calculations? Her mothers work? A snake in the electrical box? Sabotage?

By the time she had run her mind in circles, she was done with her origami. A yellow paper duckling. She smiled sadly - at least wasn’t totally useless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, people heard her freaking out.  
> No, they aren't going to tell her.  
> Yes, they are giving her shit about it behind her back.


	3. The Monsters Under the Bed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was going to be longer but I was taking to long so I just split it up. I’ve been working and getting ready for the fall semester, and I just had my twenty-first birthday a few days ago! *streamers go off, confetti falls everywhere*  
> It's weird trying to balance all of my hobbies, tbh, I wish I had more energy for everything. Anyway, enjoy, R&R! I hope you guys like this chapter! Thanks for reading!

> Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.  
>  – Anais Nin

A knock at Mora’s door startled her out of her work, and in her surprise she knocked over the small ark of origami animals off her desk. “Come in,” she chimed, bending over and collecting her paper zoo. 

Demyx peeked his head around the door, a laidback grin on his face, before walked in. “Hey! How’re ya feeling? I figured we could grab some lunch and I could show you around the castle.”

Mora breathed a sigh of relief. She was _starving,_ “Yes, please. I’ve been hungry for a while but I’m too afraid of getting lost.” She smiled sheepishly, rubbing the back of her neck. “This place is huge.”

Demyx pat her shoulder as they turned to the hallway. “You’ll get used to it. I’m hopeless at directions, but after a few weeks I knew this place pretty well.” His smile was bright and reassuring, and jarring when compared to the cold atmosphere of the castle, “There are only a few places you _really_ need to remember anyway. Our rooms, the lab, the kitchen, and the grey area are where we spend the most time - everything else’ll just come with time.” He perked up as if suddenly remembering something and turned to her. “Do you feel like playing some music later? I have a keyboard in my room.”

The hair on the back of her neck stood on end, unused to people knowing things about her that she hadn’t told them. She’d played piano since she was five, and still practiced on a smaller electric keyboard in her room. Well, she had practiced. She doubted she would get much of a chance if what they were saying was true. It was convenient that he knew already, but still unnerving. Mora cleared her throat and brushed away her thoughts. “What do you play? Or are you more of a singer?” 

Demyx’s eyes lit up, excitement clear on his face. “I play the sitar mostly, but I like to try a whole load of instruments. I’ve been trying my hand at the _Cetera,_ but that one’s really tricky because it has sixteen strings.”

“You should’ve seen me when I tried a harpsichord. My notes were all over the place.” Mora spoke and looked out the windows as they passed. There was a bright, neon-lit city below them, but none of the sounds that should accompany it. No cars, no people or sirens, no animals that she could see. The entire city was still. Occasionally she thought she could see movement in the shadows, like it was restless. The odd flash of white would streak through the air once in a while, but she couldn’t get a good look at what it could be. Birds, maybe?

Hopefully it was just her mind playing tricks on her.

She visibly relaxed when they reached the kitchen and she could just focus on food instead of the eerie deadness of the city outside. They discussed music and how they had learned to play over lunch. Mora made a simple ham and cheese and Demyx made ramen. Later she would learn that it’s one of the only foods he eats - the others being chicken nuggets, rice dishes, various pastas, oatmeal, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Apparently he’s been that way since he was little. 

“How are you feeling, by the way?” He started, blue eyes wide. And if it reminded her of her little brother at all, well, Mora ignored it. Thinking of home was too much right now. “I don’t remember my first week or so here but I can’t imagine that it’s easy.”

Mora sighed, setting down her water and wringing her own hands. “I’m not sure yet. This place is strange… quiet. It’s creepy. And this it’s huge, but there are like five people living here, why is it so empty?" She looked at the walls as if they would answer her questions. They didn’t. “And you don’t remember how you got here?” She cut herself off before she got farther. Maybe now wasn’t the time for her to list off all the weird things about this place.

“There are thirteen of us, actually.” He chimed, either unaware of her anxiety or ignoring it. “Fourteen now that you're here.”

She shook her head and ran a hand through her hair, heart hammering in her chest. She knew there had to be reasons for this place’s oddness, but everything inside her screamed that whatever answer she came up with would be wildly off-base. But she hated not knowing more than she hated being wrong. “That’s still a problem. Only thirteen people living in this gigantic castle? Where’s everyone else? This place could fit _hundreds._ ”

Demyx just shrugs, unconcerned. “Normal people? It’s just you. The dusks take care of the place for us. I guess there might've been a lot of folks here a long time ago, but now it’s just heartless and nobodies.”

Mora froze. “Are…” She swallowed the lump in her throat and steeled herself, hoping she was overreacting or misinterpreting what he just said. “Are you not normal people?”

“No-one told you?” He dropped his chopsticks and stood suddenly, pulling Mora out of her chair and running down the hall back the way they came, frantic. “God, I’m so stupid, of course no one told you, you’ve been alone!”

She struggled to keep up with him, feet land clumsily on the floor, but he was going so fast she nearly fell over with every. “Where are we going?” She shouted, gabbing at his wrist, pulling at his coat, “And let me go, Christ!”

He dropped her wrist like he’d been burned, stopping and turning on his heels to look her over like she was a fallen toddler being checked for scrapes. “Oh, god, I’m so sorry! Are you alright?” He placed his hands on her shoulders, panic flashing on his face. “I sometimes forget you’re not as strong as we are; I didn’t hurt you did I? I-”

“I’m fine,” Mora cut him off firmly, placing her hand on his, trying not to snap at him. “Just don’t do that again.”

All the tension left his body at once. Then he just started walking again, his hand still gripping hers. She quirked her brow, anxiety levels high and rising steadily. She was wary of what could possibly have him so worked up. She would let him hold her hand if it made him feel better, though - he seemed like a very tactile person.

He started talking again, this time more composed. “Zexion’s in his room, he’s better at explaining things than I am.” He looked sheepish. “I’m not so good with science stuff. Not like you guys.”

Zexion’s room was close to hers, styled with a “VI” in gothic font. Unlike a few doors they had already passed, this one was plain and undecorated, sporting the same white color as the rest of the hallways in this blinding place. Mora raised her arm to knock, but Demyx barged through the door with no fanfare before she could, and was met with a flying book to the face.

“I told you to knock!” An irate voice sounded from inside the room. “Do you want me to throw you into a sand pit in Agrabah?”

Demyx just cradled his face, whining and stomping his foot. “It’s important, I swear.”

“It doesn’t matter, you can’t just barge into my room whenever you feel like it.” Zexion started a lecture, but paused when Mora peered around the door, hesitant. He looked to Demyx. “Has something happened, or are you just bored?”

The blond crossed his arms at the accusation, but didn’t seem overly offended. Instead, he fixed his face into a determined, serious look that looked wholly out of place on him. “We need to talk to Mora about The Heartless.”

Three hours, twelve minutes, and two seconds later, Mora curled in on herself, hiding underneath the quilt in her room.

This was getting to be too much. 

_First_ , they tell her that “Hearts,” basically someone’s goddamn soul, are not only _tangible, real things_ but that they can also be _stolen_. She felt her own heart pounding restlessly in her chest. The thought made her want to vomit, but she could at least control herself on that.

Apparently no one she had met in the past day had a heart, even though they seemed like normal humans. Zexion had said something about echoes still being sound, but fainter and harder to discern. It wasn’t an explanation she was comfortable with, though. She wouldn’t even have believed them at all if it wasn’t for the fact that they had shown her a dusk in person. Its eyeless face... _hollow, onesie-looking, zipper-mouthed, twitchy bastard_ … she had nearly passed out. _It didn’t have any insides._ There was even one outside her room right now, sent by neither Zexion nor Demyx. She tried not to think about why it was there.

She just wanted to hide in her room for the rest of forever, or cut her losses and run, but the teenagers had been adamant that the _literal monsters outside would actually eat her alive if she tried._ That thought alone was enough to get her to stay put inside the castle, alone with her anxiety.

Apparently, Nobodies were harmless enough… to her, at least, since they listened to the Organization. The threat in that fact rung clear through her, though, even if there had been none intended. If protection could be given to her, it could be taken away just as easily. She had no intention on testing that out for herself.

Heartless, however, were completely fucking feral. They would only occasionally listen to others, so long as they had power over darkness (another complication in all of this which made her head spin.) Nobody here controlled the heartless. The only thing keeping her safe from them was the cold, barren walls of the Castle That Never Was, and a measly leather coat with _magic_ that hid her from them.

They had been the writhing darkness she saw in the shadows outside...

Fucking hell.


End file.
